Site Mobile Navigation

Recall Election Could Foretell November Vote

Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee, left, a Democrat, is opposing Scott Walker, right, the Republican governor, in the recall election on Tuesday.Credit
Narayan Mahon for The New York Times

WAUKESHA, Wis. — If this was ever an election just about Wisconsin, it is far more than that now.

With more than $30 million raised from conservative donors, many of them from other states, and visits from a who’s who of high-profile Republican governors (Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Bob McDonnell), Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign to survive a recall vote has the feel, the money and the stakes of a national race.

And in many ways it is. The outcome of the election on Tuesday will not just decide the state’s leanings on matters of budget, taxes and policy, as well as the ultimate trajectory of Mr. Walker’s fast-rising political prospects. It will also send a message about a larger fight over labor across the country, and about whether voters are likely to reject those who cut collective bargaining rights, as Governor Walker did here last year for most of the state’s public workers, setting off this battle in the first place.

Broadly, the results will be held up as an omen for the presidential race in the fall, specifically for President Obama’s chances of capturing this Midwestern battleground — one that he easily won in 2008 but that Republicans nearly swept in the midterm elections of 2010.

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Walker, who is only the third governor in the nation to face a recall election, dashed onto a makeshift stage on a loading dock here as supporters screamed, the song “Only in America” pounded from loudspeakers, a bank of television cameras rolled and Mr. Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, beamed behind him.

With the remnants of a sinus infection and round-the-clock campaign stops lingering in his voice, Mr. Walker urged the crowd not to let up, declaring that union bosses were pouring money into the state to remove him because, he said, “they don’t like the fact that we’ve got a governor here who stood up and took on the powerful special interests.”

Mr. Walker’s Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee, who holds the hopes of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents who began seeking Mr. Walker’s recall just a year into the governor’s first term, has trailed in some public polls, though Mr. Walker’s lead has generally fallen within each poll’s margin of sampling error.

A Marquette Law School telephone poll of 600 likely voters, conducted last week, found Mr. Walker leading 52 percent to 45 percent; the poll’s margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4 percentage points for each candidate.

Mr. Barrett, who ran for governor against Mr. Walker in 2010, again became the Democrats’ nominee a month ago when he won a contested primary — one step in the process, set by Wisconsin law, for calling what amounts to a new election for a sitting governor if at least a quarter of the total number of voters from the last election sign recall petitions.

He has drawn his own outside help from national Democrats as well as from union groups, which are operating at least 32 field offices here and say they have been building neighborhood alliances with advocates for environmental issues, women, retirees and other causes. In the last few months, Mr. Barrett has raised more than $4 million in contributions — a lot, though not on the same scale as Mr. Walker, who benefited from a quirk in state law that allowed him to raise unlimited contributions (in some cases, as much as $500,000 from individual donors) for his campaign’s expenses before a recall was officially declared by the state.

At a restaurant in Mondovi, a small town in western Wisconsin, a table of women continued their bridge game the other day as Mr. Barrett asked for the crowd’s votes, pledged to end the “civil war” that has boiled over in Wisconsin in the last 16 months and poked at his opponent’s blossoming national profile.

“He loves being the poster boy for the Tea Party movement in this country,” Mr. Barrett, addressing another group jammed into a cafe in Menomonie, said of Mr. Walker. “And he has had a lot of success — he’s become the rock star of the far right.”

Former President Bill Clinton was expected to arrive here on Friday to campaign for Mr. Barrett, but to the disappointment of some voters, Mr. Obama has not appeared in person to bolster the campaign, nor have his top surrogates.

Video

TimesCast Politics: Recall in Wisconsin

Monica Davey is on the campaign trail ahead of Tuesday’s Wisconsin recall election.

Although the president has conveyed his support for Mr. Barrett, the recall is an undeniably complex calculus for Mr. Obama’s strategists: Wisconsin has voted for Democrats in every presidential election since 1988, but the margins have sometimes been remarkably slim, and the recall election has led independents and Republicans who voted for Mr. Obama four years ago to take sides. He needs their votes in November and may not want to alienate them by stepping conspicuously into the fight.

State Democratic leaders say that Mr. Obama’s campaign has worked diligently on the race, devoting volunteers to outreach and early voting, and that Democrats nationally — including the Democratic National Committee’s chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who appeared in the state this week on Mr. Barrett’s behalf, and the Democratic Governors Association’s chairman, Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, who campaigned here on Thursday — have fought hard.

“I hope everybody understands that this is important not only for Wisconsin, which is of primary importance, but also for the rights of workers across this country and frankly for the Democratic Party, for President Obama — they all have a stake in this,” said Russ Feingold, a former United States senator who was defeated here in the 2010 Republican wave.

Wisconsin residents once brimmed with stories of bipartisan cooperation — or at least civilized discourse between opposing political sides. Overflowing here now: stories of marriages, friendships, workplaces, Thanksgiving dinners divided by the fight that began in February 2011, when Mr. Walker announced plans to cut benefits and strip collective bargaining rights for most public workers.

Winning this election may be less a matter of convincing undecided voters, if there are any, than of getting people to the polls. The splintering that started when Mr. Walker cut bargaining rights has seeped into other issues: austere budget choices; a voter ID law; removal of a law that allowed people to seek punitive and compensatory damages in state court over employment discrimination; efforts to encourage iron ore mining,

Among the voters, the sides are stark and, more than a year after tens of thousands of protesters marched around the State Capitol in Madison, surprisingly raw.

“We don’t want the state taken over by the Koch brothers,” said Mary Jean Nicholls, a former teacher, referring to Charles and David Koch, billionaire industrialists who are among Mr. Walker’s supporters.

Craig Dedo, a computer consultant and Walker supporter, said the race boiled down to one question: Who runs Wisconsin? “The Democrats and the unions, who are the takers?” he asked, “or the Republicans, the party of the private sector and the people who pay the bills?”

Mr. Barrett says he will work to restore collective bargaining rights, though, given Republican control of the State Assembly, that would be no small task. On the campaign trail, he regularly points to a continuing investigation that has led to criminal charges against aides and associates from the governor’s previous job as Milwaukee County executive.

And he criticizes Mr. Walker, who promised to bring 250,000 new jobs to the state by the end of 2014, over the state’s jobs picture — an issue that is a matter of intense debate. The Democrats, citing survey data used by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, say that the state has lost tens of thousands of jobs since 2010, while Mr. Walker, citing unemployment insurance reports recently submitted by the state to the federal government, says that Wisconsin has actually gained tens of thousands of jobs.

For his part, Mr. Walker criticizes Mr. Barrett for his leadership in Milwaukee, the state’s most populous city, citing increased tax burdens and unemployment.

A Walker victory would reawaken the hopes and efforts of Republicans here on behalf of Mitt Romney. It would also, Governor Walker says, allow Wisconsin to end this scuffle at last.

“What we do here in Wisconsin is we disagree sometimes on issues, and then we move on, and that’s what we’re going to do here,” Mr. Walker said in an interview. “I think we’re going to move on and move forward.”

Still, whatever the election results, some voters said they expected to see only more — more recalls of state lawmakers, more lawsuits over legislation, more discord around supper tables.

A version of this article appears in print on June 1, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Recall Election Could Foretell November Vote. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe